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This also seems to account for the fact that this model philosopher,
with all his careful study of particulars before rising to universals,
taught that the earth was in the centre of the universe; while Plato,
who lost himself in the maze of Pythagorean “vagaries,” and started
from general principles, was perfectly versed in the heliocentric
system. We can easily prove the fact, by availing ourselves of the
said inductive method for Plato’s benefit. We know that the Sodalian
oath of the initiate into the Mysteries prevented his imparting his
knowledge to the world in so many plain words. “It was the dream of
his life,” says Champollion, “to write a work and record in it in full the
doctrines taught by the Egyptian hierophants; he often talked of it,
but found himself compelled to abstain on account of the ‘solemn
oath.’”
And now, judging our modern-day philosophers on the vice versa
method—namely, arguing from universals to particulars, and laying
aside scientists as individuals to merely give our opinion of them,
viewed as a whole—we are forced to suspect this highly respectable
association of extremely petty feelings toward their elder, ancient,
and archaic brothers. It really seems as if they bore always in mind
the adage, “Put out the sun, and the stars will shine.”
We have heard a French Academician, a man of profound
learning, remark, that he would gladly sacrifice his own reputation to
have the record of the many ridiculous mistakes and failures of his
colleagues obliterated from the public memory. But these failures
cannot be recalled too often in considering our claims and the
subject we advocate. The time will come when the children of men of
science, unless they inherit the soul-blindness of their skeptical
parents, will be ashamed of the degrading materialism and narrow-
mindedness of their fathers. To use an expression of the venerable
William Howitt, “They hate new truths as the owl and the thief hate
the sun.... Mere intellectual enlightenment cannot recognize the
spiritual. As the sun puts out a fire, so spirit puts out the eyes of
mere intellect.”
It is an old, old story. From the days when the preacher wrote, “the
eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing,”
scientists have deported themselves as if the saying were written to
describe their own mental condition. How faithfully Lecky, himself a
rationalist, unconsciously depicts this propensity in men of science to
deride all new things, in his description of the manner in which
“educated men” receive an account of a miracle having taken place!
“They receive it,” says he, “with an absolute and even derisive
incredulity, which dispenses with all examination of the evidences!”
Moreover, so saturated do they become with the fashionable
skepticism after once having fought their way into the Academy, that
they turn about and enact the role of persecutors in their turn. “It is a
curiosity of science,” says Howitt, “that Benjamin Franklin, who had
himself experienced the ridicule of his countrymen for his attempts to
identify lightning and electricity, should have been one of the
Committee of Savants, in Paris, in 1778, who examined the claims of
mesmerism, and condemned it as absolute quackery!”[642]
If men of science would confine themselves to the discrediting of
new discoveries, there might be some little excuse for them on the
score of their tendency to a conservatism begotten of long habits of
patient scrutiny; but they not only set up claims to originality not
warranted by fact, but contemptuously dismiss all allegations that the
people of ancient times knew as much and even more than
themselves. Pity that in each of their laboratories there is not
suspended this text from Ecclesiastes: “Is there anything whereof it
may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time,
which was before us.”[643] In the verse which follows the one here
quoted, the wise man says, “There is no remembrance of former
things;” so that this utterance may account for every new denial. Mr.
Meldrum may exact praise for his meteorological observation of
Cyclones in the Mauritius, and Mr. Baxendell, of Manchester, talk
learnedly of the convection-currents of the earth, and Dr. Carpenter
and Commander Maury map out for us the equatorial current, and
Professor Henry show us how the moist wind deposits its burden to
form rivulets and rivers, only to be again rescued from the ocean and
returned to the hill-tops—but hear what Koheleth says: “The wind
goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth
about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his
circuits.”[644]
“All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full: unto the place
from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.”[645]
The philosophy of the distribution of heat and moisture by means
of ascending and descending currents between the equator and the
poles, has a very recent origin; but here has the hint been lying
unnoticed in our most familiar book, for nearly three thousand years.
And even now, in quoting it, we are obliged to recall the fact that
Solomon was a kabalist, and in the above texts, simply repeats what
was written thousands of years before his time.
Cut off as they are from the accumulation of facts in one-half of the
universe, and that the most important, modern scholars are naturally
unable to construct a system of philosophy which will satisfy
themselves, let alone others. They are like men in a coal mine, who
work all day and emerge only at night, being thereby unable to
appreciate or understand the beauty and glory of the sunshine. Life
to them measures the term of human activity, and the future presents
to their intellectual perception only an abyss of darkness. No hope of
an eternity of research, achievement, and consequent pleasure,
softens the asperities of present existence; and no reward is offered
for exertion but the bread-earning of to-day, and the shadowy and
profitless fancy that their names may not be forgotten for some years
after the grave has closed over their remains. Death to them means
extinction of the flame of life, and the dispersion of the fragments of
the lamp over boundless space. Said Berzelius, the great chemist, at
his last hour, as he burst into tears: “Do not wonder that I weep. You
will not believe me a weak man, nor think I am alarmed by what the
doctor has to announce to me. I am prepared for all. But I have to bid
farewell to science; and you ought not to wonder that it costs me
dear.”[646]
How bitter must be the reflections of such a great student of nature
as this, to find himself forcibly interrupted midway toward the
accomplishment of some great study, the construction of some great
system, the discovery of some mystery which had baffled mankind
for ages, but which the dying philosopher had dared hope that he
might solve! Look at the world of science to-day, and see the atomic
theorists, patching the tattered robes which expose the imperfections
of their separate specialties! See them mending the pedestals upon
which to set up again the idols which had fallen from the places
where they had been worshipped before this revolutionary theory
had been exhumed from the tomb of Demokritus by John Dalton! In
the ocean of material science they cast their nets, only to have the
meshes broken when some unexpected and monstrous problem
comes their way. Its water is like the Dead Sea—bitter to the taste;
so dense, that they can scarcely immerse themselves in it, much
less dive to its bottom, having no outlet, and no life beneath its
waves, or along its margin. It is a dark, forbidding, trackless waste;
yielding nothing worth the having, because what it yields is without
life and without soul.
There was a period of time when the learned Academics made
themselves particularly merry at the simple enunciation of some
marvels which the ancients gave as having occurred under their own
observations. What poor dolts—perhaps liars, these appeared in the
eyes of an enlightened century! Did not they actually describe horses
and other animals, the feet of which presented some resemblance to
the hands and feet of men? And in a.d. 1876, we hear Mr. Huxley
giving learned lectures in which the protohippus, rejoicing in a quasi-
human fore-arm, and the orohippus with his four toes and Eocene
origin, and the hypothetical pedactyl equus, maternal grand-uncle of
the present horse, play the most important part. The marvel is
corroborated! Materialistic Pyrrhonists of the nineteenth century
avenge the assertions of superstitious Platonists; the antediluvian
gobe-mouches. And before Mr. Huxley, Geoffroi St. Hilaire has
shown an instance of a horse which positively had fingers separated
by membranes.[647] When the ancients spoke of a pigmy race in
Africa, they were taxed with falsehood. And yet, pigmies like these
were seen and examined by a French scientist during his voyage in
the Tenda Maia, on the banks of the Rio Grande in 1840;[648] by
Bayard Taylor at Cairo, in 1874; and by M. Bond, of the Indian
Trigonometrical Survey, who discovered a wild dwarfish race, living
in the hill-jungles of the western Galitz, to the southwest of the Palini
Hills, a race, though often heard of, no trace of which had previously
been found by the survey. “This is a new pigmy race, resembling the
African Obongos of du Chaillu, the Akkas of Schweinfurth, and the
Dokos of Dr. Krapf, in their size, appearance, and habits.”[649]
Herodotus was regarded as a lunatic for speaking of a people who
he was told slept during a night which lasted six months. If we
explain the word “slept” by an easy misunderstanding it will be more
than easy to account for the rest as an allusion to the night of the
Polar Regions.[650] Pliny has an abundance of facts in his work,
which until very recently, were rejected as fables. Among others, he
mentions a race of small animals, the males of which suckle their
young ones. This assertion afforded much merriment among our
savants. In his Report of the Geological Survey of the Territories, for
1872, Mr. C. H. Merriam describes a rare and wonderful species of
rabbit (Lepus Bairdi) inhabiting the pine-regions about the head-
waters of the Wind and Yellowstone Rivers, in Wyoming.[651] Mr.
Merriam secured five specimens of this animal, “which ... are the first
individuals of the species that have been brought before the
scientific world. One very curious fact is that all the males have teats,
and take part in suckling their young! ... Adult males had large teats
full of milk, and the hair around the nipple of one was wet, and stuck
to it, showing that, when taken, he had been engaged in nursing his
young.” In the Carthaginian account of the early voyages of
Hanno,[652] was found a long description of “savage people ...
whose bodies were hairy and whom the interpreters called gorillæ;”
ἄνθρωποι ἄγριοι, as the text reads, clearly implying thereby that
these wild men were monkeys. Until our present century, the
statement was considered an idle story, and Dodwell rejected
altogether the authenticity of the manuscript and its contents.[653]
The celebrated Atlantis is attributed by the latest modern
commentator and translator of Plato’s works to one of Plato’s “noble
lies.”[654] Even the frank admission of the philosopher, in the
Timæus, that “they say, that in their time ... the inhabitants of this
island (Poseidon) preserved a tradition handed down by their
ancestors concerning the existence of the Atlantic island of a
prodigious magnitude ... etc.”[655] does not save the great teacher
from the imputation of falsehood, by the “infallible modern school.”
Among the great mass of peoples plunged deep in the
superstitious ignorance of the mediæval ages, there were but a few
students of the Hermetic philosophy of old, who, profiting by what it
had taught them, were enabled to forecast discoveries which are the
boast of our present age; while at the same time the ancestors of our
modern high-priests of the temple of the Holy Molecule, were yet
discovering the hoof-tracks of Satan in the simplest natural
phenomenon. Says Professor A. Wilder: “Roger Bacon (sixteenth
century), in his treatise on the Admirable Force of Art and Nature,
devotes the first part of his work to natural facts. He gives us hints of
gunpowder and predicts the use of steam as a propelling power. The
hydraulic press, the diving bell and kaleidoscope are all
described.”[656]
The ancients speak of waters metamorphosed into blood; of
blood-rain, of snow-storms during which the earth was covered to
the extent of many miles with snow of blood. This fall of crimson
particles has been proved, like everything else, to be but a natural
phenomenon. It has occurred at different epochs, but the cause of it
remains a puzzle until the present day.
De Candolle, one of the most distinguished botanists of this
century, sought to prove in 1825, at the time when the waters of the
lake of Morat had apparently turned into a thick blood, that the
phenomenon could be easily accounted for. He attributed it to the
development of myriads of those half vegetable, half-infusory
animals which he terms Oscellatoria rubescens, and which form the
link between animal and vegetable organisms.[657] Elsewhere we
give an account of the red snow which Captain Ross observed in the
Arctic regions. Many memoirs have been written on the subject by
the most eminent naturalists, but no two of them agree in their
hypotheses. Some call it “pollen powder of a species of pine;” others,
small insects; and Professor Agardt confesses very frankly that he is
at a loss to either account for the cause of such phenomena, or to
explain the nature of the red substance.[658]
The unanimous testimony of mankind is said to be an irrefutable
proof of truth; and about what was ever testimony more unanimous
than that for thousands of ages among civilized people as among the
most barbarous, there has existed a firm and unwavering belief in
magic? The latter implies a contravention of the laws of nature only
in the minds of the ignorant; and if such ignorance is to be deplored
in the ancient uneducated nations, why do not our civilized and
highly-educated classes of fervent Christians, deplore it also in
themselves? The mysteries of the Christian religion have been no
more able to stand a crucial test than biblical miracles. Magic alone,
in the true sense of the word, affords a clew to the wonders of
Aaron’s rod, and the feats of the magi of Pharaoh, who opposed
Moses; and it does that without either impairing the general
truthfulness of the authors of the Exodus, or claiming more for the
prophet of Israel than for others, or allowing the possibility of a single
instance in which a “miracle” can happen in contravention of the laws
of nature. Out of many “miracles,” we may select for our illustration
that of the “river turned into blood.” The text says: “Take thy rod and
stretch out thine hand (with the rod in it) upon the waters, streams,
etc.... that they may become blood.”
We do not hesitate to say that we have seen the same thing
repeatedly done on a small scale, the experiment not having been
applied to a river in these cases. From the time of Van Helmont,
who, in the seventeenth century, despite the ridicule to which he
exposed himself, was willing to give the true directions for the so-
called production of eels, frogs, and infusoria of various kinds, down
to the champions of spontaneous generation of our own century, it
has been known that such a quickening of germs is possible without
calling in the aid of miracle to contravene natural law. The
experiments of Pasteur and Spallanzani, and the controversy of the
panspermists with the heterogenists—disciples of Buffon, among
them Needham—have too long occupied public attention to permit
us to doubt that beings may be called into existence whenever there
is air and favorable conditions of moisture and temperature. The
records of the official meetings of the Academy of Sciences of
Paris[659] contain accounts of frequent appearances of such
showers of blood-red snow and water. These blood-spots were
called lepra vestuum, and were but these lichen-infusoria. They were
first observed in 786 and 959, in both of which years occurred great
plagues. Whether these zoöcarps were plants or animals is
undetermined to this day, and no naturalist would risk stating as a
certainty to what division of the organic kingdom of nature they
belong. No more can modern chemists deny that such germs can be
quickened, in a congenial element, in an incredibly short space of
time. Now, if chemistry has, on the one hand, found means of
depriving the air of its floating germs, and under opposite conditions
can develop, or allow these organisms to develop, why could not the
magicians of Egypt do so “with their enchantments?” It is far easier
to imagine that Moses, who, on the authority of Manetho, had been
an Egyptian priest, and had learned all the secrets of the land of
Chemia, produced “miracles” according to natural laws, than that
God Himself violated the established order of His universe. We
repeat that we have seen this sanguification of water produced by
Eastern adepts. It can be done in either of two ways: In one case the
experimenter employed a magnetic rod strongly electrified, which he
passed over a quantity of water in a metallic basin, following a
prescribed process, which we have no right to describe more fully at
present; the water threw up in about ten hours a sort of reddish froth,
which after two hours more became a kind of lichen, like the lepraria
kermasina of Baron Wrangel. It then changed into a blood-red jelly,
which made of the water a crimson liquid that, twenty-four hours
later, swarmed with living organisms. The second experiment
consisted in thickly strowing the surface of a sluggish brook, having
a muddy bottom, with the powder of a plant that had been dried in
the sun and subsequently pulverized. Although this powder was
seemingly carried off by the stream, some of it must have settled to
the bottom, for on the following morning the water thickened at the
surface and appeared covered with what de Candolle describes as
Oscellatoria rubescens, of a crimson-red color, and which he
believes to be the connecting link between vegetable and animal life.
 Taking the above into consideration, we do not see why the
learned alchemists and physicists—physicists, we say—of the
Mosaic period should not also have possessed the natural secret of
developing in a few hours myriads of a kind of these bacteria, whose
spores are found in the air, the water, and most vegetable and
animal tissues. The rod plays as important a part in the hands of
Aaron and Moses as it did in all so-called “magic mummeries” of
kabalist-magicians in the middle ages, that are now considered
superstitious foolery and charlatanism. The rod of Paracelsus (his
kabalistic trident) and the famous wands of Albertus Magnus, Roger
Bacon, and Henry Kunrath, are no more to be ridiculed than the
graduating-rod of our electro-magnetic physicians. Things which
appeared preposterous and impossible to the ignorant quacks and
even learned scientists of the last century, now begin to assume the
shadowy outlines of probability, and in many cases are
accomplished facts. Nay, some learned quacks and ignorant
scientists even begin to admit this truth.
In a fragment preserved by Eusebius, Porphyry, in his Letter to
Anebo, appeals to Chœremon, the “hierogrammatist,” to prove that
the doctrine of the magic arts, whose adepts “could terrify even the
gods,” was really countenanced by Egyptian sages.[660] Now,
bearing in mind the rule of historical evidence propounded by Mr.
Huxley, in his Nashville address, two conclusions present
themselves with irresistible force: First, Porphyry, being in such
unquestioned repute as a highly moral and honorable man, not given
to exaggeration in his statements, was incapable of telling a lie about
this matter, and did not lie; and second, that being so learned in
every department of human knowledge about which he treats,[661] it
was most unlikely that he should be imposed upon as regards the
magic “arts,” and he was not imposed upon. Therefore, the doctrine
of chances supporting the theory of Professor Huxley, compels us to
believe, 1, That there was really such a thing as magic “arts;” and, 2,
That they were known and practiced by the Egyptian magicians and
priests, whom even Sir David Brewster concedes to have been men
of profound scientific attainments.
 CHAPTER XII.
“You never hear the really philosophical defenders of the doctrine of uniformity
speaking of impossibilities in nature. They never say what they are constantly
charged with saying, that it is impossible for the Builder of the universe to alter his
work.... No theory upsets them (the English clergy).... Let the most destructive
hypothesis be stated only in the language current among gentlemen, and they look
it in the face.”—Tyndall: Lecture on the Scientific Use of the Imagination.
“The world will have a religion of some kind, even though it should fly for it to the
intellectual whoredom of Spiritualism.”—Tyndall: Fragments of Science.

“But first on earth as vampire sent

Thy corpse shall from its tomb be rent, ...
And suck the blood of all thy race.”—Lord Byron: Giaour.

W e are now approaching the hallowed precincts of that Janus-

god—the molecular Tyndall. Let us enter them barefoot. As we
pass the sacred adyta of the temple of learning, we are nearing the
blazing sun of the Huxleyocentric system. Let us cast down our
eyes, lest we be blinded.
We have discussed the various matters contained in this book,
with such moderation as we could command in view of the attitude
which the scientific and theological world have maintained for
centuries toward those from whom they have inherited the broad
foundations of all the actual knowledge which they possess. When
we stand at one side, and, as a spectator, see how much the
ancients knew, and how much the moderns think they know, we are
amazed that the unfairness of our contemporary schoolmen should
pass undetected.
Every day brings new admissions of scientists themselves, and
the criticisms of well-informed lay observers. We find the following
illustrative paragraph in a daily paper:
 “It is curious to note the various opinions which prevail among
scientific men in regard to some of the most ordinary natural
phenomena. The aurora is a notable case in point. Descartes
considered it a meteor falling from the upper regions of the
atmosphere. Halley attributed it to the magnetism of the terrestrial
globe, and Dalton agreed with this opinion. Coates supposed that
the aurora was derived from the fermentation of a matter emanating
from the earth. Marion held it to be a consequence of a contact
between the bright atmosphere of the sun and the atmosphere of our
planet. Euler thought the aurora proceeded from the vibrations of the
ether among the particles of the terrestrial atmosphere. Canton and
Franklin regarded it as a purely electrical phenomenon, and Parrot
attributed it to the conflagration of hydrogen-carbonide escaping
from the earth in consequence of the putrefaction of vegetable
substances, and considered the shooting stars as the initial cause of
such conflagration. De la Rive and Oersted concluded it to be an
electro-magnetic phenomenon, but purely terrestrial. Olmsted
suspected that a certain nebulous body revolved around the sun in a
certain time, and that when this body came into the neighborhood of
the earth, a part of its gaseous material mixed with our atmosphere,
and that this was the origin of the phenomenon of the aurora.” And
so we might say of every branch of science.
Thus, it would seem that even as to the most ordinary natural
phenomena, scientific opinion is far from being unanimous. There is
not an experimentalist or theologian, who, in dealing with the subtile
relations between mind and matter, their genesis and ultimate, does
not draw a magical circle, the plane of which he calls forbidden
ground. Where faith permits a clergyman to go, he goes; for, as
Tyndall says, “they do not lack the positive element—namely, the
love of truth; but the negative element, the fear of error,
preponderates.” But the trouble is, that their dogmatic creed weighs
down the nimble feet of their intellect, as the ball and chain does the
prisoner in the trenches.
As to the advance of scientists, their very learning, moreover, is
impeded by these two causes—their constitutional incapacity to
understand the spiritual side of nature, and their dread of public
opinion. No one has said a sharper thing against them than
Professor Tyndall, when he remarks, “in fact, the greatest cowards of
the present day are not to be found among the clergy, but within the
pale of science itself.”[662] If there had been the slightest doubt of the
applicability of this degrading epithet, it was removed by the conduct
of Professor Tyndall himself; for, in his Belfast address, as President
of the British Association, he not only discerned in matter “the
promise and potency of every form and quality of life,” but pictured
science as “wresting from theology the entire domain of
cosmological theory;” and then, when confronted with an angry
public opinion, issued a revised edition of the address in which he
had modified his expression, substituting for the words “every form
and quality of life,” all terrestrial life. This is more than cowardly—it is
an ignominious surrender of his professed principles. At the time of
the Belfast meeting, Mr. Tyndall had two pet aversions—Theology
and Spiritualism. What he thought of the former has been shown; the
latter he called “a degrading belief.” When hard pressed by the
Church for alleged atheism, he made haste to disclaim the
imputation, and sue for peace; but, as his agitated “nervous centres”
and “cerebral molecules” had to equilibrate by expanding their force
in some direction, he turns upon the helpless, because
pusillanimous, spiritualists, and in his Fragments of Science insults
their belief after this fashion: “The world will have a religion of some
kind, even though it should fly for it to the intellectual whoredom of
Spiritualism.” What a monstrous anomaly, that some millions of
intelligent persons should permit themselves to be thus reviled by a
leader in science, who, himself, has told us that “the thing to be
repressed both in science and out of it is ‘dogmatism!’”
We will not encroach upon space by discussing the etymological
value of the epithet. While expressing the hope that it may not be
adopted in future ages by science as a Tyndallism, we will simply
remind the benevolent gentleman of a very characteristic feature in
himself. One of our most intelligent, honorable, and erudite
spiritualists, an author of no small renown,[663] has pointedly termed
this feature as “his (Tyndall’s) simultaneous coquetry with opposite
opinions.” If we are to accept the epithet of Mr. Tyndall in all its
coarse signification, it applies less to spiritualists, who are faithful to
their belief, than to the atheistical scientist who quits the loving
embraces of materialism to fling himself in the arms of a despised
theism; only because he finds his profit in it.
We have seen how Magendie frankly confesses the ignorance of
physiologists as to some of the most important problems of life, and
how Fournié agrees with him. Professor Tyndall admits that the
evolution-hypothesis does not solve, does not profess to solve, the
ultimate mystery.
We have also given as much thought as our natural powers will
permit to Professor Huxley’s celebrated lecture On the Physical
Basis of Life, so that what we may say in this volume as to the
tendency of modern scientific thought may be free from ignorant
misstatement. Compressing his theory within the closest possible
limits, it may be formulated thus: Out of cosmic matter all things are
created; dissimilar forms result from different permutations and
combinations of this matter; matter has “devoured spirit,” hence spirit
does not exist; thought is a property of matter; existing forms die that
others may take their place; the dissimilarity in organism is due only
to varying chemical action in the same life-matter—all protoplasm
being identical.
As far as chemistry and microscopy goes, Professor Huxley’s
system may be faultless, and the profound sensation caused
throughout the world by its enunciation can be readily understood.
But its defect is that the thread of his logic begins nowhere, and ends
in a void. He has made the best possible use of the available
material. Given a universe crowded with molecules, endowed with
active force, and containing in themselves the principle of life, and all
the rest is easy; one set of inherent forces impel to aggregate into
worlds, and another to evolve the various forms of plant and animal
organism. But what gave the first impulse to those molecules and
endowed them with that mysterious faculty of life? What is this occult
property which causes the protoplasms of man, beast, reptile, fish, or
plant, to differentiate, each ever evolving its own kind, and never any
other? And after the physical body gives up its constituents to the
soil and air, “whether fungus or oak, worm or man,” what becomes of
the life which once animated the frame?
Is the law of evolution, so imperative in its application to the
method of nature, from the time when cosmic molecules are floating,
to the time when they form a human brain, to be cut short at that
point, and not allowed to develop more perfect entities out of this
“preëxistent law of form?” Is Mr. Huxley prepared to assert the
impossibility of man’s attainment to a state of existence after
physical death, in which he will be surrounded with new forms of
plant and animal life, the result of new arrangements of now
sublimated matter?[664] He acknowledges that he knows nothing
about the phenomena of gravitation; except that, in all human
experience, as “stones, unsupported, have fallen to the ground,
there is no reason for believing that any stone so circumstanced will
not fall to the ground.” But, he utterly repels any attempt to change
this probability into a necessity, and in fact says: “I utterly repudiate
and anathematize the intruder. Facts I know, and Law I know; but
what is this necessity, save an empty shadow of my own mind’s
throwing?” It is this, only, that everything which happens in nature is
the result of necessity, and a law once operative will continue to so
operate indefinitely until it is neutralized by an opposing law of equal
potency. Thus, it is natural that the stone should fall to the ground in
obedience to one force, and it is equally natural that it should not fall,
or that having fallen, it should rise again, in obedience to another
force equally potent; which Mr. Huxley may, or may not, be familiar
with. It is natural that a chair should rest upon the floor when once
placed there, and it is equally natural (as the testimony of hundreds
of competent witnesses shows) that it should rise in the air,
untouched by any visible, mortal hand. Is it not Mr. Huxley’s duty to
first ascertain the reality of this phenomenon, and then invent a new
scientific name for the force behind it?
“Facts I know,” says Mr. Huxley, “and Law I know.” Now, by what
means did he become acquainted with Fact and Law? Through his
own senses, no doubt; and these vigilant servants enabled him to
discover enough of what he considers truth to construct a system
which he himself confesses “appears almost shocking to common
sense.” If his testimony is to be accepted as the basis for a general
reconstruction of religious belief, when they have produced only a
theory after all, why is not the cumulative testimony of millions of
people as to the occurrence of phenomena which undermine its very
foundations, worthy of a like respectful consideration? Mr. Huxley is
not interested in these phenomena, but these millions are; and while
he has been digesting his “bread and mutton-protoplasms,” to gain
strength for still bolder metaphysical flights, they have been
recognizing the familiar handwriting of those they loved the best,
traced by spiritual hands, and discerning the shadowy simulacra of
those who, having lived here, and passed through the change of
death, give the lie to his pet theory.
So long as science will confess that her domain lies within the
limits of these changes of matter; and that chemistry will certify that
matter, by changing its form “from the solid or liquid, to the gaseous
condition,” only changes from the visible to the invisible; and that,
amid all these changes, the same quantity of matter remains, she
has no right to dogmatize. She is incompetent to say either yea or
nay, and must abandon the ground to persons more intuitional than
her representatives.
High above all other names in his Pantheon of Nihilism, Mr. Huxley
writes that of David Hume. He esteems that philosopher’s great
service to humanity to be his irrefragable demonstration of “the limits
of philosophical inquiry,” outside which lie the fundamental doctrines
“of spiritualism,” and other “isms.” It is true that the tenth chapter of
Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding was so highly
esteemed by its author, that he considered that “with the wise and
learned” it would be an “everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious
delusion,” which with him was simply a convertible term to represent
a belief in some phenomena previously unfamiliar and by him
arbitrarily classified as miracle. But, as Mr. Wallace justly observes,
Hume’s apothegm, that “a miracle is a violation of the laws of
nature,” is imperfect; for in the first place it assumes that we know all
the laws of nature; and, second, that an unusual phenomenon is a
miracle. Mr. Wallace proposes that a miracle should be defined as:
“any act or event necessarily implying the existence and agency of
superhuman intelligences.” Now Hume himself says that “a uniform
experience amounts to a proof,” and Huxley, in this famous essay of
his, admits that all we can know of the existence of the law of
gravitation is that since, in all human experience, stones
unsupported have fallen to the ground, there is no reason for
believing that the same thing will not occur again, under the same
circumstances, but, on the contrary, every reason to believe that it
will.
If it were certain that the limits of human experience could never
be enlarged, then there might be some justice in Hume’s assumption
that he was familiar with all that could happen under natural law, and
some decent excuse for the contemptuous tone which marks all of
Huxley’s allusions to spiritualism. But, as it is evident from the
writings of both these philosophers, that they are ignorant of the
possibilities of psychological phenomena, too much caution cannot
be used in according weight to their dogmatic assertions. One would
really suppose that a person who should permit himself such
rudeness of criticism upon spiritualistic manifestations had qualified
himself for the office of censor by an adequate course of study; but,
in a letter addressed to the London Dialectical Society, Mr. Huxley,
after saying that he had no time to devote to the subject, and that it
does not interest him, makes the following confession, which shows
us upon what slight foundation modern scientists sometimes form
very positive opinions. “The only case of spiritualism,” he writes, “I
ever had the opportunity of examining into for myself, was as gross
an imposture as ever came under my notice.”
What would this protoplasmic philosopher think of a spiritualist
who, having had but one opportunity to look through a telescope,
and upon that sole occasion had had some deception played upon
him by a tricky assistant at the observatory, should forthwith
denounce astronomy as a “degrading belief?” This fact shows that
scientists, as a rule, are useful only as collectors of physical facts;
their generalizations from them are often feebler and far more
illogical than those of their lay critics. And this also is why they
misrepresent ancient doctrines.
 Professor Balfour Stewart pays a very high tribute to the
philosophical intuition of Herakleitus, the Ephesian, who lived five
centuries before our era: the “crying” philosopher who declared that
“fire was the great cause, and that all things were in a perpetual
flux.” “It seems clear,” says the professor, “that Herakleitus must
have had a vivid conception of the innate restlessness and energy of
the universe, a conception allied in character to, and only less
precise than that of modern philosophers who regard matter as
essentially dynamical.” He considers the expression fire as very
vague; and quite naturally, for the evidence is wanting to show that
either Prof. Balfour Stewart (who seems less inclined to materialism
than some of his colleagues) or any of his contemporaries
understand in what sense the word fire was used.
His opinions about the origin of things were the same as those of
Hippocrates. Both entertained the same views of a supreme
power,[665] and, therefore, if their notions of primordial fire, regarded
as a material force, in short, as one akin to Leibnitz’s dynamism,
were “less precise” than those of modern philosophers, a question
which remains to be settled yet, on the other hand their metaphysical
views of it were far more philosophical and rational than the one-
sided theories of our present-day scholars. Their ideas of fire were
precisely those of the later “fire-philosophers,” the Rosicrucians, and
the earlier Zoroastrians. They affirmed that the world was created of
fire, the divine spirit of which was an omnipotent and omniscient god.
Science has condescended to corroborate their claims as to the
physical question.
Fire, in the ancient philosophy of all times and countries, including
our own, has been regarded as a triple principle. As water comprises
a visible fluid with invisible gases lurking within, and, behind all the
spiritual principle of nature, which gives them their dynamic energy,
so, in fire, they recognized: 1st. Visible flame; 2d. Invisible, or astral
fire—invisible when inert, but when active producing heat, light,
chemical force, and electricity, the molecular powers; 3d. Spirit. They
applied the same rule to each of the elements; and everything
evolved from their combinations and correlations, man included, was
held by them to be triune. Fire, in the opinion of the Rosicrucians,
who were but the successors of the theurgists, was the source, not
only of the material atoms, but also of the forces which energize
them. When a visible flame is extinguished it has disappeared, not
only from the sight but also from the conception of the materialist,
forever. But the Hermetic philosopher follows it through the “partition-
world of the knowable, across and out on the other side into the
unknowable,” as he traces the disembodied human spirit, “vital spark
of heavenly flame,” into the Æthereum, beyond the grave.[666]
This point is too important to be passed by without a few words of
comment. The attitude of physical science toward the spiritual half of
the cosmos is perfectly exemplified in her gross conception of fire. In
this, as in every other branch of science, their philosophy does not
contain one sound plank: every one is honeycombed and weak. The
works of their own authorities teeming with humiliating confessions,
give us the right to say that the floor upon which they stand is so
unstable, that at any moment some new discovery, by one of their
own number, may knock away the props and let them all fall in a
heap together. They are so anxious to drive spirit out of their
conceptions that, as Balfour Stewart says: “There is a tendency to
rush into the opposite extreme, and to work physical conceptions to
an excess.” He utters a timely warning in adding: “Let us be cautious
that, in avoiding Scylla, we do not rush into Charybdis. For the
universe has more than one point of view, and there are possibly
regions which will not yield their treasures to the most determined
physicists, armed only with kilogrammes and meters and standard
clocks.”[667] In another place he confesses: “We know nothing, or
next to nothing, of the ultimate structure and properties of matter,
whether organic or inorganic.”
As to the other great question—we find in Macaulay, a still more
unreserved declaration: “The question what becomes of man after
death—we do not see that a highly educated European, left to his
unassisted reason, is more likely to be in the right than a Blackfoot
Indian. Not a single one of the many sciences in which we surpass
the Blackfoot Indians throws the smallest light on the state of the
soul after the animal life is extinct. In truth, all the philosophers,
ancient and modern, who have attempted, without the help of
revelation, to prove the immortality of man, from Plato down to
Franklin, appear to us to have failed deplorably.”
There are revelations of the spiritual senses of man which may be
trusted far more than all the sophistries of materialism. What was a
demonstration and a success in the eyes of Plato and his disciples is
now considered the overflow of a spurious philosophy and a failure.
The scientific methods are reversed. The testimony of the men of
old, who were nearer to truth, for they were nearer to the spirit of
nature—the only aspect under which the Deity will allow itself to be
viewed and understood—and their demonstrations, are rejected.
Their speculations—if we must believe the modern thinkers—are but
the expression of a redundance of the unsystematic opinions of men
unacquainted with the scientific method of the present century. They
foolishly based the little they knew of physiology on well-
demonstrated psychology, while the scholar of our day bases
psychology—of which he confesses himself utterly ignorant—on
physiology, which to him is as yet a closed book, and has not even a
method of its own, as Fournié tells us. As to the last objection in
Macaulay’s argument, it was answered by Hippocrates centuries
ago: “All knowledge, all arts are to be found in nature,” he says; “if
we question her properly she will reveal to us the truths to pertain to
each of these and to ourselves. What is nature in operation but the
very divinity itself manifesting its presence? How are we to
interrogate her; and how is she to answer us? We must proceed with
faith, with the firm assurance of discovering at last the whole of the
truth; and nature will let us know her answer, through our inner
sense, which with the help of our knowledge of a certain art or
science, reveals to us the truth so clearly that further doubt becomes
impossible.”[668]
Thus, in the case in hand, the instinct of Macaulay’s Blackfoot
Indian is more to be trusted than the most instructed and developed
reason, as regards man’s inner sense which assures him of his
immortality. Instinct is the universal endowment of nature by the
Spirit of the Deity itself; reason the slow development of our physical
constitution, an evolution of our adult material brain. Instinct, as a
divine spark, lurks in the unconscious nerve-centre of the ascidian
mollusk, and manifests itself at the first stage of action of its nervous
system as what the physiologist terms the reflex action. It exists in
the lowest classes of the acephalous animals as well as in those that
have distinct heads; it grows and develops according to the law of
the double evolution, physically and spiritually; and entering upon its
conscious stage of development and progress in the cephalous
species already endowed with a sensorium and symmetrically-
arranged ganglia, this reflex action, whether men of science term it
automatic, as in the lowest species, or instinctive, as in the more
complex organisms which act under the guidance of the sensorium
and the stimulus originating in distinct sensation, is still one and the
same thing. It is the divine instinct in its ceaseless progress of
development. This instinct of the animals, which act from the
moment of their birth each in the confines prescribed to them by
nature, and which know how, save in accident proceeding from a
higher instinct than their own, to take care of themselves unerringly
—this instinct may, for the sake of exact definition, be termed
automatic; but it must have either within the animal which possesses
it or without, something’s or some one’s intelligence to guide it.
This belief, instead of clashing with the doctrine of evolution and
gradual development held by eminent men of our day, simplifies and
completes it, on the contrary. It can readily dispense with special
creation for each species; for, where the first place must be allowed
to formless spirit, form and material substance are of a secondary
importance. Each perfected species in the physical evolution only
affords more scope to the directing intelligence to act within the
improved nervous system. The artist will display his waves of
harmony better on a royal Erard than he could have done on a spinet
of the sixteenth century. Therefore whether this instinctive impulse
was directly impressed upon the nervous system of the first insect,
or each species has gradually had it developed in itself by
instinctively mimicking the acts of its like, as the more perfected
doctrine of Herbert Spencer has it, is immaterial to the present
subject. The question concerns spiritual evolution only. And if we
reject this hypothesis as unscientific and undemonstrated, then will